Revolutions have taken place over the past decade that have opened up shale plays for the extraction of ever precious hydrocarbons. Horizontal wells are replacing vertical wells. Completions use slickwater hydraulic fracturing instead of gel fracs. Multiple wells are drilled from a single pad. Production increasingly uses an arsenal of digital tools to recover the most oil and gas possible.

The innovation doesn’t stop there.

As horizontal drilling married with slickwater fracturing has become the norm in exploration, advancements around one component is on the verge of changing the landscape of the Permian Basin: the humble grain of sand.

Large sand deposits exist in and around the areas of Monahans and Kermit. While they historically have been the sites for sledding down dunes and putting ATVs through their paces, the sand now has a future in the oil and gas industry. In hydraulic fracturing, sand is used as proppant, which holds open the tiny fissures created in the shale by water applied under high pressure. Better proppant means better recovery of hydrocarbons.

Frac jobs require large quantities of sand, which typically is shipped in by rail from Wisconsin or trucked in from the Brady area. Now, operators are targeting sand in their own back yard, and for good reason: the closer the sand, the less expensive and more efficient the operation. Companies such as Hi-Crush and Black Mountain Sand are opening mines in the Permian Basin and building logistics networks to get sand delivered to well sites. Demand is expected to be high.

“The projection for 2018 is 100 million tons of sand will be consumed in all the U.S. shale basins, and half of that will be in the Permian Basin,” said Hi-Crush Chief Financial Officer Laura Fulton. Hi-Crush has several mines in Wisconsin that ship the northern white variety of sand to the Permian and other basins around the nation. Their mine in Kermit has been operational since July 31, and it’s one of about 15 mines that are springing up in the Permian.

Getting sand to well sites isn’t an easy task. Each frac job requires about 400 to 500 truckloads of sand, and each truckload carries about 23 tons. The roads these trucks ride on weren’t necessarily built for such activity.

James Beauchamp is the president of the Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance, a group that works to improve transportation infrastructure in the Permian Basin. Beauchamp and others say that, at least initially, the total truckload volume isn’t expected to change; however, where it’s located will.

“Those frac sand mines are in fairly narrow locations. We see the majority of that activity is going to impact a couple of roadways in particular: State Highway 18, SH 115, SH 302 and, to a lesser but still significant extent, the western portion of Interstate 20,” Beauchamp said. “When you look at those roads outside the interstate, they haven’t been built to any significant standards. They’re, for the most part, rural two-lane roadways.”

Beauchamp said SH 302 is expected to see the brunt of the activity. It’s a major roadway that moves traffic eastbound out of the western portion of the Permian, where the new frac sand mines are located. To help spread the load out, Hi-Crush has several large-scale terminals in Big Spring, Odessa and Pecos where drivers can pick up loads, be it with pneumatic trailers, specialized boxes or bottom-dump trailers normally used in the hauling of caliche or asphalt.

“That footprint of having three large-scale terminals — Pecos in particular — will mean being able to handle quite a large volume of sand. Combined with our in-basin facility means we can supply any well with the massive quantities of sand that they’re looking for as close as possible,” Fulton said.

It’s the availability of truckers, however, that also presents challenges for the new sand mines.

GETTING LICENSED

“It takes a lot of skill to be a driver hauling sand,” Leon Barton said.

He would know. Barton is an instructor at the truck driving school at Midland College. A 30-year veteran, he spent several years hauling sand from the Brady area before venturing into education.

“You’ve got to be dedicated. The thing about it is, you get out on these small locations, and if you didn’t know your backing skills, it would be hard to maneuver in and around the equipment.”

There seems to be a perpetual shortage of truck drivers in the Permian Basin, and Midland College and Odessa College can’t train enough. Both operate four-week programs to prepare students for getting their commercial driver’s license. Barton says Midland College is short on instructors.

“If we had the correct number of instructors that we need right now, we could have 12 students. Right now, we’re down to two instructors, so we’ve had to cut our classrooms to six. We’ve had two instructors who have left to go into the oilfield to make more money. That’s just the way it is.”

Odessa College has partnered with International Schools for its CDL program since 2000. The program is always in demand not just by students, but by companies.

“We’ve had companies come to us, and they need 200 people trained for CDLs,” said Associate Dean of Continuing Education Jerry Wallace.

Odessa College is working to take over the program in hopes of greatly expanding it to accommodate the demand for customized education, which isn’t limited to the oil field.

“We have an electrical lineman program, and those guys require a CDL. There are multiple occupations that need a CDL, so demand is always going to be high,” Wallace said. “Our goal is to have five trucks and two simulators. We want to offer it here and in Pecos because Pecos has a high demand.

“We don’t want any students to get left out. (However), we can only fit in what we can, and it’s first come, first served. We can’t build that partnership with industries, so that’s why we need to take over the instruction so we can have that partnership and customize our training,” he said.

Right now, Odessa College has two instructors and can have four to eight students per instructor, “though eight is stretching it,” Wallace said.

He said getting a formal education is important because schools often are a direct pipeline to employment, which MC sees firsthand at its program.

“We get recruiters in here from everywhere trying to hire what students we do have,” Barton said. “We have four to five recruiters come in every class.”

Schooling is only one part of obtaining a CDL. Students must pass driving tests with the Department of Public Safety, which Barton said is becoming more difficult. Applicants are failed for not knowing exact pre-test routines, and there isn’t any leniency on backing tests. Hit a cone, and a student won’t pass, Barton said. “DPS is extremely particular right now on who can get a license.”

Midland College helps the process move along by requiring all students to have their learner’s permit before starting classes and by working with DPS to get testing scheduled, though there is a waiting period because DPS is very busy with CDL testing.

“For this class right now, we’re into the latter part of October and into November before they can even test,” said Barton, who added that DPS favors the colleges because they train students the way DPS wants them to be trained.

WINDOW TIME

Life as a truck driver, however, isn’t glamorous.

“I’ve got about 30 years behind the wheel, and I’ve always done oilfield and specialized hauling,” Barton said. “I never did do much cross-country. In my earlier years, I moved drilling rigs.”

He has been teaching for about 5 1/2 years and much prefers 40-hour work weeks and paid holidays. “I started getting older and got tired of 100- to 120-hour weeks.”

When asked how he could work 120 per week, given that there are only 168 hours in a week, he replied: “You just do it.

“Drive and sleep. A lot of companies start at 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. and end at 10 p.m. to midnight. Get a few hours of sleep and get right back at it again.”

He said federal law now limits truck drivers to 11 hours total on the road and 14 hours in a workday. After that, drivers have to take a 10-hour break. They also can’t work more than 70 hours in a week. Once that mark is hit, drivers must take a 24-hour break. Drivers must maintain logbooks, and starting the first of the year, all rigs must have electronic logging devices

“The laws have really changed a lot,” he said, adding that you can’t cheat an ELD.

Barton said some companies do skirt the law. He recalled one student he had that went to work for a sand hauling company. He said the student was told to cheat on logbooks so he could work 80 to 90 hours per week. The student quit rather than complying.

“When they get an order, these companies are going to push these guys to the limit — and over the limit if they can,” he said.

Barton said having a skilled driver for sand hauling is critical. “It’s probably more crucial than any other job that I know of. When you’re hauling crude or water, you have one way of loading and one way of unloading,” which isn’t the case for sand hauling.

It also can mean long waits to offload sand at the well site. “A lot of times, you’ll go to these well locations and you have 20 trucks ahead of you because they’ll pump several different stages. There might be so many trucks in line that you end up sitting eight or nine hours waiting to be able to get unloaded. In some ways that’s good because if you have a sleeper cab, you can sleep until someone knocks on your door.”

PREPARING THE WAY

Companies expect that having local sand mines and creating a network for easier pickup will mean fewer truck trips and less demand for additional drivers.

“Being close means you can use fewer truckers going back and forth from the terminal to the well site and get three or four turns as opposed to one or even half a turn per day, which is happening today with sand coming into the Permian from Central Texas,” Fulton said.

Black Mountain sand has a pair of mines coming online early next year. Chief Commercial Officer Hayden Gillespie acknowledged the shortage of drivers — and labor in general — and said using in-basin sand will mean rerouting traffic as it exists today.

“We expect to see incremental demand in sand volumes in subsequent years, but today’s demand is already being serviced by trucks today,” he said. “They pull from several different pull points from New Mexico all the way down to Big Spring. A lot of it will be rerouting, which in a lot of ways, I think, will make the trucks there more efficient. Instead of having to pull from 20 different pull points, there will become some sort of efficiency where there’s a central point they’ll pull from, kind of like a hub-and-spoke model.”

Plus, local sand will help consolidate operations.

“I think some of the big service companies that are pulling from several pull points can consolidate their demand points,” Gillespie said. “For example, instead buying 3 million tons from 10 different pull points, they can just buy 3 million tons from the Black Mountain sand mine, which increases the turn rates on the trucks, makes them more efficient and requires less trucking capacity.”

Hi-Crush and Black Mountain said they are partnering with major third-party logistics companies to handle sand deliveries if well site operators don’t want to use their own companies. For Hi-Crush, Fulton said the company is concerned about a lack of truck drivers, but that’s why it’s working with large, established firms instead of “piecing together a bunch of mom-and-pop rigs.”

“It’s important to have the full supply chain all the way from the mine to the blender hopper at the well site,” she said. “Our customers are definitely valuing that. We’re excited about what’s coming; we think we’ve planned appropriately and we think we’re ready.”

To help, Barton said he’s trying to get a pneumatic trailer at Midland College so that it can better train future sand haulers.

Gillespie is confident any labor and logistics snags will be worked out.

“The hope is that as the Permian Basin continues to grow, the labor base, including trucking, continues to get drawn in. If any place is capable of doing, it’s the Permian Basin. Time and time again, the Permian has shown it can rise to the challenge and meet those growth peaks.”★